Pages

Friday, August 10, 2012

Food, Family, Friday: Musing on Millet

Husband screw-ups are a special category of mistake. No doubt there are infinite variations, but
they all have at least two qualities in common: 1) they begin with a sense of
triumph quickly dashed (think of the DIY husband who declares the kitchen
faucet fixed right before the geyser erupts and a thunderous voice instructs
him to build an ark); and 2) they somehow have lasting effects, even if it is
just a bit of family folklore Mom enjoys telling (“Kids, remember the time Dad
stapled himself to the UPS truck and ended up in Nebraska?”).

A few months ago, I was walking to the car after a furious bout
of grocery shopping. My phone rang and
it was BMW wondering when I’d be home.

“How much did you buy?” she asked with an entirely unwarranted alarm in her voice.

“A pound and a half.”

Since this is a family blog I will simply say that she
expressed a certain dissatisfaction with that data point.

“I wanted to make sure you had enough,” I protested.

“I didn’t want ANY!”

So, not only did I have to go back inside to buy bulgur, the
mistake just keeps on giving. I have
been working for the past several weeks to do things with millet. It’s gone into soups and stirfries and you
should see the fashionable millet and duct tape shoes the kids are wearing.

However, the millet odyssey came to a close recently thanks
to inspiration from this millet risotto recipe on Cookstr. As you can see from the picture, millet
is a tiny – almost seed-like – grain that you can use like rice. You can pretty much substitute it for rice in
many recipes, but it will not plump up the way rice will. It has a nutty consistency when cooked and
offers plenty of al dente bite.

I seldom follow any recipe to the letter, so here I stir
fried the zucchini until it had some color and then removed it from the pan. Then, some butter went into the pan, followed
shortly by a whole large onion, chopped.
In the meantime, about three bulbs of garlic were roasting in the oven.

Take a look at this post for a better primer on
risotto, but once the onion softens the millet goes in and gets a little stir
fry of its own to coat it with the fat and the sugars from the onion and even
toast a bit, maybe two minutes. Throw in
a cup of white wine and simmer until it is absorbed. I had leftover chicken broth from some
poached chicken breast (another blog post) and added it a half cup at a time
until the millet was cooked.

A bit of half and half to add creaminess. About three quarters of a cup of
parmigiano-reggiano added in roughly thirds.
Last thing you do is add back the zukes and the roasted garlic.

Get When Dad Cooks on Email

Recent Posts

About Me

My mother believed that anything worth eating was also worth frying. Mom's vegetable repertoire was limited. I was about 30, shopping with my California-raised bride, when I discovered that spinach was not naturally a bunch of green yuck that oozed out of a can.
Food and cooking is my hobby, my passion and a scholarly interest. It is also at the center of our family life.
Of course, Dad's cooking presents some unique hazards that are just built into the male DNA. It is said that men will only do things that are either dirty or dangerous and that pretty much describes the kitchen when I am in my frenzy. Early in our marriage, my wife would enter the kitchen and say some things that, well, can't be shared in a family-oriented blog, but you can easily find those words in other corners of the Internet. Over time, though, she discovered that there was a direct correlation between the level of utter destruction and the quality of the meal. These days, she comes into the kitchen, surveys the debris and says, "Oh, this is going to be good."